A Hundred Years Too Late to Love You
by MissHikaHaru
Summary: Time travel is impossible; that was what Haruhi believed. Past tense being correct in this, for now she is all too aware of how possible it really is. Due to an accident for once not caused by Tamaki, she finds herself in London, 1888, in the house of Earl Ciel Phantomhive. With nowhere to go, she befriends the staff, somehow managing to include the mysterious black clad butler.


_This story is by request of Calantha S :)_

* * *

"Watcha reading?"

"Go away, you two."

"Watcha reading?"

"I said go away."

"Watcha reading?"

"Hikaru, Kaoru, please."

"Watcha reading?"

Kyoya heaved an exasperated sigh and slumped himself down upon the sofa, hunching himself over his book in an attempt to throw off the twins, who had been pestering him with the same question for an uncounted number of minutes, much to the irritation of everyone in the room.

"Watcha reading?"

"Oh, knock it off, you guys," I grunted, and they turned their identical ginger heads round to look at me as I reached wearily for my teacup. They ceased their question and instead chose to stalk over to me. As I raised the cup to my lips and prepared to take a sip, they said loudly, "Watcha drinking?"

"Oh my God!" Kyoya groaned from the sofa, dropping the book over his face and clapping his hands over his ears. They grinned.

"Are you two always so insufferable?" Tamaki asked from his seat opposite me, rubbing a hand against a vein that beat in his temple.

"Yes," the twins consented, still grinning ever wider. "Watcha drinking?" they asked again as I tried to take some of my drink without them noticing.

"I hate you," I muttered, downing the drink in one. "It's tea, in case you were interested."

"Why on earth would we want to know what you were drinking, Haruhi?"

"You're intolerable…" I breathed through my teeth, shaking my head at them.

"How kind you are to us," Hikaru said.

"Such a charming compliment," Kaoru added.

"Oh, shut up," Tamaki batted his hand at them for them to move along and irritate someone else for a while.

"What, it's not our fault we're bored!" they indignantly remarked as they were swatted away like large orange flies. "You're the one who made us come in on a bank holiday!"

"Pssh!" the blonde sighed, continuing to waft his hand at them. "Go find someone else to annoy."

"But we already finished what we needed to do," Hikaru moaned.

"Yeah, just ask Kyoya-senpai," Kaoru said.

"Kyoya?"

"Truthfully, yes, we have finished today's agenda. I don't actually know why you're all still here," the bespectacled boy answered, having now stood up and was holding his large book in his crossed arms.

"Oh…" Tamaki said simply.

"See?" the twins smirked at him.

"Then I suppose you'll have to go home and leave us in peace, won't you?" I said to them, and they looked at me, affronted.

"But that's so _boring, _Haruhi!" they whined, and they reminded me of little boys begging their mother for sweets after having been naughty. "We want to do something that involves everyone!"

"Well, there's practically nothing we could do," I said shortly, "seeing as how none of us actually brought any money with us today." The twins exchanged glances and grinned, leaning over the back of my chair with their faces on either side of me.

"Then why don't we all go to your house, Haruhi?"

"I may have a suggestion," Kyoya called, and we all turned to look at him in time to see him push the oval shaped glasses further up his thin nose. He was proffering forward his enormous book. "I was reading _The Chronic Argonauts, _by H.G. Wells."

"I didn't know you liked fiction, Kyoya-senpai," I said interestedly. He shrugged.

"You never asked, I suppose," he smiled wryly. "Anyway, there is an invention that I have read to have been researched and steadily created since the release of this book in 1888. It is believed to have been finished, at last, by a narcoleptic Japanese inventor who says he found the inspiration to finish it in a lucid dream brought on my his condition. And it is now on display in this very city."

"What sort of an invention, Kyo-chan?" Honey asked, having at last looked up from his feat of cakes and caramels - there were little flecks of sticky white icing on his fat pink cheeks and around his mouth. He hugged Usa-chan tightly with excitement, smiling with interest.

"It is believed to be a time machine."

"It - what!?"

"A time machine?"

"Can we go!?"

"Kyoya, that's just ridiculous," I said sceptically, and he raised his eyebrows at me.

"Is it now?" he asked coolly.

"Time travel is a myth. It's not real," I replied flatly.

"Well, then," he said with a cynical smile, "I may just have to take you up on that bet. Come on, then, you lot - why don't we have a trip to the museum?"

* * *

As expected of this 'time machine' there was a positive hoard of visitors, swarming like bees to honey, all ignorant of the fact such an invention was quite honestly impossible. I mean, really - time travel? Nice for a television show or a sci-fi movie, but for real life not so much. Such a ridiculous idea, to take yourself to a time that's not your own. Life only exists in the present, there is no future until it becomes present; the past is the past, so let it be. Even if this time machine was real, which it wasn't, it should bloody well be left alone. It wasn't right to go meddling with things such as time. Anything could happen. And that 'anything' would obviously be bad.

What with the crowd being quite so enormous, we decided instead to divert our time to the other exhibits, wandering around the charming museum and admiring the strange things we saw, and occasionally running away from guards; we had to go so far as to pull Kaoru out of a sarcophagus because Hikaru had dared him to hide inside it. It wasn't until very late in the day, near closing time, that the crowd had decidedly seen enough of the infernal invention and we were able to squeeze into the steadily emptying display hall.

It was entirely empty, save for a high stage at the far end, upon which were a number of screens and chairs and a pedestal of sorts. As we approached, we saw a minute gold pocket watch with an incredibly long, fine chain resting upon a stand on the pedestal. It had thirteen spindly hands, all of which were seemingly controlled by a single pin which could be wound either way. There was a lapis lazuli stopper, either side of which sprouted the chain. The odd little machine could have fit in the palm of my hand.

"Is that it?" Honey asked, a little disappointed. No doubt he had been expecting something far more exciting, perhaps with lasers or some grand trans-dimensional portal which glowed and hummed from the ceiling. We heard a laugh from behind a screen on the stage, and a tall and spider-like man in a violently purple suit walked out, holding a near empty water bottle in his hand.

"Yes, yes," he said, smiling down at what he presumed to be a little boy who did not yet have an understanding of things, taking a quick swig from his bottle, "that is it, little one." He took another swig, now finishing the drink and crushing the plastic bottle in his hand before putting it in his pocket. "Not very big for over a hundred years of experimentation and refining, but it's still pretty, isn't it?" Honey nodded enthusiastically, and the man ruffled his hair.

"Excuse me, sir," I said curtly, and he looked at me in turn, "but you can't honestly try and convince people that _this _can travel through time. It's simply not possible."

"But what _is _possibility, dear boy?" he inquired, and I frowned. "If something is possible or not is an impossible notion in itself, don't you think? Possibility is only as possible as it is possible for something to be, but the question is is it possible for things to be possible or are they, in fact, impossible?" He smiled a sardonic sort of smile, one I would have expected to see from Kyoya. At his remark, the twins exchanged glances.

"This guy's mad," they said in an undertone. I silently agreed.

"Mad? No," the man in the strange suit acknowledged, undoing the buttons of his purple jacket and shedding it. He slung it over one of the chairs. "Eccentric?" He reached out a hand and, with his thumb and forefinger, pinched around the end of the chain and began to slowly raise it from its stand. The chain was at least the length of his spidery arm, and dangled down from the stage to hover an inch or so above my head. "Yes." He grinned toothily. "What you are looking at is my life's work, and the work of many lives before me. And now it is complete. This watch is the first and only of its kind."

"But it's not real_,_" I insisted, folding my arms adamantly. He swung the chain backward so its propulsion caused it to then swing forward and tap me gently on the forehead.

"There, you felt that, didn't you?" he asked, "It's real enough."

"Even so, it doesn't_ work._"

"If you're so sure," he chimed, taking a firm hold of the watch itself and stepping down from the stage to stand beside me, "let me show you."

"What?"

"Now, let's see…" He wound the chain about his neck and fiddled with the pin, turning it backward. I watched in fascination as the thirteen hands spiralled about in erratic order. "I think I'll take you somewhere simple - ten minutes ago should do it. Though, not here, we'd be crushed to stand here, what with all the people that were just in here. Hmm…" I looked concernedly at the others, who all shrugged at me, as the man lifted up the lapis lazuli stopper. I saw it was on a very long, thin wire, and he spoke into it to say, "London." With that, he took my hand, and pushed down the stopper.

A split second passed where I thought nothing had happened. Then an explosion of colour burst across my vision, an ultraviolet array of psychedelic shapes and locomotion. It zoomed past me like a bullet, colours blurring together, though myself and the man tightly gripping my hand did not move at all. It felt difficult to think, let alone breathe. It gave a similar sensation to that of being squeezed through a microscopic tube on heavy vacuum. I clenched my eyes tight shut against the blinding nature of the things around me, feeling a powerful wind slashing at every inch of me. I could hear a ticking, growing louder and louder and increasing in speed until finally it was a continuous buzz of ticking. Wait. No it wasn't. It was the sound of a car horn.

I opened my eyes, and found I was on Westminster Bridge, cars and big red double-decker buses driving past; the London Eye was right there, enormous and circular like a gigantic bike wheel. People in suits power walked by, clutching their briefcases and talking on their phones in rapid English.

"Well…?"

"But this is impossible…" I whispered, entirely breathless and feeling really rather nauseous.

"You know what I say about possibility."

I turned to look at the strange, spidery man in his loud purple attire.

"How do we get back?" I asked, wanted desperately to return home as soon as possible.

"Not to worry, it's quite simple," he assured me, raising his left hand. I could see a gold ring inscribed with a similar lapis stone and an electronic receptor of sorts. "While I wear this ring, I will always be able to return to the last time I visited - if I decided to return here after going home, I wouldn't have to affect the input of the watch at all."

"And what about me?"

"You," he continued, now proffering his hand to me, "need only maintain contact with - " But the rest of his sentence was completely lost, for he had slumped forward into me, his eyes rolling closed. He barrelled me right over on the pavement, and I shrieked with surprise.

"Sir!?" I gulped, shifting him off me and turning him onto his back. "Sir! Are you alright?" A number of commuters carried on by, but a smartly dressed woman bent down over us.

"What happened to him?" she asked, but I didn't fully understand her.

"He just collapsed!" I cried, but it was evident that she didn't understand me, either. She put her head to is chest and felt for a heartbeat, but it was perfectly normal, as was his breathing.

"I'll call an ambulance," she said quickly, fishing out her phone and dialling three nines. He then heaved a deep, rumbling snore, and I remembered what Kyoya had said about him being narcoleptic.

"Damn!" I muttered, scrabbling about for the pocket watch. I saw that the fall had knocked one of its hands out of place, and I cursed its lack of glass protection. I stripped it from his neck and slipped it over my own, fiddling with the pin to try and fix it, even though I had no idea how. They all whizzed about dizzyingly, but I had no way of knowing what I was doing. Trusting his judgement of the ring returning him, I grabbed the man's sleeve and pulled out the little blue stopper and said, without thinking, "Home!" before pushing it back down again. The last thing of that time I heard was the woman's scream of pure terror as both I and the eccentric man disappeared from the pavement before her.

Clutching the watch tight in my hand, I kept my eyes shut against the blinding colours that swarmed by once more. After feeling the sickening sensation of being crushed from the inside, it all stopped and I tentatively opened one eye. I was not in the museum, and I was not in the company of anyone I knew. Even the man had disappeared. Instead, I now stared directly ahead into the bright blue eye of a boy with teal coloured hair, who stared back with great surprise from behind a grand cherry wood desk. He set down the peacock feather quill with which he had been writing, and continued to stare at me.

"Sebastian?" he inquired, and I looked round to see a door opening and a tall, handsome man with black hair and red eyes enter. He looked down at me, standing there like a rabbit in the headlights, and saw the absolute terror and bewilderment in my face. "I was not aware we were expecting visitors, today."

"Nor I, my young lord," said the man in a cool voice, his blood red eyes boring into mine. There was something decidedly beautiful about those petrifying eyes, a quiet nature of dangerous mystery within them. "Would you mind telling me who you are?"

I had no idea what they were saying, and I instantly wished I had Kyoya with me, for he could speak English. Oh, why did I turn down his offer to teach me? In the silence that ensued, I looked down at the pocket watch clasped painfully tight in my grasp. Then I looked back up at the boy, feeling my heartbeat grow faster and faster. It didn't take long before I fainted.


End file.
